Adolescents’ Mobile Phone Use While Crossing the Road

Abstract

Phones and other portable technology can be a distraction for pedestrians, affecting their ability to cross a road safely. This study focused on adolescents and investigated whether using a phone distracts attention while crossing the road. A field observation outside a secondary school in the north of England was carried out over a four-week period in 2018 with permission from the school. Observations included recording what accessories the pedestrian was carrying (phone, headphones or another electronic device) and their associated action (whether they were holding the device, speaking into a phone, looking at it, holding it to their ear or interacting with it manually). We observed whether the pedestrian looked (or failed to look) left and right before crossing the road, whether they crossed when the pedestrian light was on green or red, and whether they crossed within the cross-walk. We found that 31.37% of road crossings were made by adolescents with a phone or other device. They looked left and right before crossing less frequently when they had an electronic device with them, when looking at the screen and when texting or swiping. In conclusion, the safety of adolescent pedestrians is affected by mobile phones and music players.

Young Pedestrians' Mobile Phone Use While Crossing the Road

“…In our study, the probability of using the phone depended on approximate age, gender and companionship, revealing higher rates of interactions with mobile devices among older children, girls and children traveling alone. Similar differences were found in previous studies on adolescents in terms of gender (Stavrinos et al, 2009) and in terms of companionship (Vollrath et al, 2019;Baswail et al, 2019).…”

“…As there is no comparable observational study in Austria, these results can only be put into relation with a survey of the Austrian Road Safety Fund, in which 34% of young people questioned stated that they listen to music while walking (Kühnelt-Leddihn et al, 2013). Other studies in Europe on young pedestrians showing rates of 25% (Vollrath et al, 2019) and 32% (Baswail et al, 2019) of holding and interacting with devices such as mobile phones or music players while crossing. It should be noted that the comparison with other studies is sometimes only possible to a limited extent due to the different characteristics of the study sites (e.g.…”

“…by phone conversations, looking at the phone, typing, listening to music) while crossing a street (Vollrath et al, 2019). According to a study in UK, this corresponds to one third of the observed school students (Baswail et al, 2019). A study in China recorded a rate of 16% of pedestrians using mobile phones while crossing unsignalized intersections -64.1% of them were young pedestrians under 30 years (Zhang et al, 2018).…”

The Adaptability and Challenges of Autonomous Vehicles to Pedestrians in Urban China

“…Moreover, the Consumer Product Safety Commission of America estimated that 3.76% of American injuries are related to phone usage and Nasar et al (Nasar and Troyer, 2013a) thought injuries caused by phone usage would be much bigger. In England, a report in 2019 found that 31.37% of adolescent pedestrians crossed the crosswalks using phones (Baswail et al, 2019). Similarly, phone usage of pedestrians has been an important problem of Chinese pedestrian safety.The table 7 as well as 8 are statistics of phone usage on crosswalks in Hefei and Wuhan respectively while Fig.…”

Adolescent Aggressive Riding Behavior: An Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Prototype Willingness Model

“…Several studies have also linked adolescent risk behaviors to independence or peer influence [ 21 ]. Students’ risky travel behaviors pose a threat to their safety, including jostling on the streets, using cell phones, and riding bikes without helmets [ 22 , 23 , 24 ]. Instead of improving transportation facilities, it would be more beneficial to help young people regulate their travel behavior.…”